Odierno takes over today as Iraq chief

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Odierno takes over today as Iraq chief
By Robert Burns - The Associated Press
Posted : Tuesday Sep 16, 2008 5:47:27 EDT

WASHINGTON — Home barely long enough to knock the Iraq dust off his boots, Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno is returning to Baghdad to command a slowly shrinking force in possibly the final phase of American combat action.

Odierno, who finished a 15-month stint as the No. 2 commander in February, moves up a spot Tuesday, succeeding Gen. David Petraeus as the overall commander of U.S. and allied forces in Iraq. Petraeus’ 20 months at the helm took Iraq from the brink of all-out civil war to a state of relative calm.

With his new assignment, Odierno will rise in rank from three- to four-star general.

It will fall to Odierno to chart a U.S.-Iraqi course for consolidating the hard-fought security gains and setting the stage for an eventual U.S. withdrawal. He arrives at a point of tension over Iraqi leaders’ insistence that all American forces — not just the combat troops — depart by 2011. The United Nations mandate that is the legal basis for the U.S. military presence expires in December.

Early in his tenure, Odierno will have the touchy task of advising the next president on how fast a U.S. pullout should proceed.


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/09/ap_odierno_091408/%2e